


Technicolor Pachyderms

by bratfarrar



Category: Supernatural
Genre: (of a sort), F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Young Winchesters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 08:06:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12077001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bratfarrar/pseuds/bratfarrar
Summary: The summer Sam was seven, they lived close enough to a Blockbuster--and John gave them enough cash for groceries--to rent one video every week.





	Technicolor Pachyderms

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/gifts).



> For the prompt _900 Amelia Richardsons. 12,000 Amelia Richardsons!_

The summer Sam was seven, they lived close enough to a Blockbuster--and John gave them enough cash for groceries--to rent one video every week. Mostly Dean let Sam pick, though when Sam wanted _The Princess Bride_ they almost had a fight in the middle of the store before Dean capitulated, on the grounds that they get _The Karate Kid_ next. (They wound up watching it twice-daily for the entire week, debating every time whether Westley or Inigo was braver.)

Years later, those are the only two movies Sam can remember, aside from the last one before they moved: _Dumbo_ , which Dean really should've vetoed--but Sam had been upset about having to leave and so Dean (as always) had acquiesced.

Sam still has nightmares about that one scene sometimes--well, okay, not so much since his stint down in the Cage; he's had other things to darken his dreams in recent years. But even in college he used to wake up panicked, expecting to still see endless streams of ever-changing pink elephants, melding and splitting and morphing into one grotesquery after another.

"Sam, you all right?" He half expects to see pink elephants now, but instead it's all human faces that blur and blend into each other. "Hey--you're starting to worry me a little." But the faces are narrow and pointy where they should be square, and the hair's too dark and the voice too high and he wants _Dean_ , Dean who can assure him that drinking beer doesn't actually do that and Timothy the mouse is a chump and _the elephants weren't even there in the first place, so what's there to be scared of?_ \--but there's no Dean, just this woman he doesn't know, and there's too many of her and why can't everything just go away so he can wake up and be in bed where he should be with Dean in the bed next to his and the familiar dingy walls of their motel room waiting for dad to come home so they can move to the next motel and the next one after that--

"SAM!" the women all say and then the world conveniently goes dark.

*

When he wakes up he's cold and wet and shivering, and Amelia is wiping him with a damp cloth. "No, don't," she says when he tries to sit up. "We still need to bring your temperature down more." Her mouth quirks in that way that could be either a frown or a smile. "Maybe next time you'll listen to me when I tell you to go get a flu shot."

So he's stuck there on the floor, mostly naked, feeling miserable and strangely bereft and trying not to think of how the whole situation would've had Dean making jokes about nurses and sponge baths.

"At least you fell down in front of the TV," Amelia tells him. "Now that you're awake again, you want me to put something on?"

"Sure," Sam manages despite stiff lips and a dry mouth. "Doesn't matter what."

 _"And love, twu wuv, will fowwow you fowevver--"_ says the TV.

"Just not that," Sam says in reply, and doesn't complain when they wind up watching CSI for the next day and a half.


End file.
